Business View Caribbean - Sept. / Oct. 2014

-DPDLFD 6HSWHPEHU ‡ 2FWREHU ² &DULEEHDQ ‡ %XVLQHVV 9LHZ sell their produce or production to vendors or to people who come and buy and then sell to supermarkets and into the market – but the vendors buy the whole crop. The farmers love that because they get one lump sum figure for whatever crop they’re growing. Now what we are about to set up is packing and grading houses, and sell to the hotels and to the restaurants that import their produce. They only want to buy grade A and grade B, but there are also grades C, D and E products, so what you also need to do is set up processing plants to deal with concentrates and have them available for export. This is how the United States and Canada deal with agriculture and we just have to follow it. BV: I s it going to be possible, easy, challenging, whatever word you want to ascribe to it, to change the mindset of some of the players there in the country to accept the new way of doing things and how mandatory it’s going to have to be? KENNEDY: I don’t think so. Most of the progressive companies in Jamaica see it, the government sees it, of course, because they are backing the plan, and as far as the farmers are concerned, if they can see that they will earn more money, they will follow the new rules. The key is to start it and then maintain it, and not allow it to die or go back to the old ways, you know? BV: Given the circumstances you explained, that’s really not an option, correct? KENNEDY: It’s not an option right now. The other thing that the government is doing is that we want to become the world’s fourth international logistics hub. The current logistics hubs are Singapore, Dubai and Rotterdam. There’s no logistics hub for the Americas. China and Japan and Thailand and the countries in the Far East want to start exporting more to the Americas, especially South and Central America, but it’s very expensive to export to these countries. So what they want to do is establish terminals, sea terminals, in the Americas. Jamaica is favored, especially by the Chinese, because Jamaica was only the second country in the Western Hemisphere to recognize mainland China as China way back in the ’60s and ’70s. We recognized China in September 1972. Cuba recognized mainland China in the late 1960s and the main reason is that the United States of America was pushing Taiwan as China and the rest of the Americas followed. Mainland China has been very appreciative of us, and they said yes they’re willing to invest in Jamaica. Jamaica came to China’s aid in mid-1972, opened domestic relations with China in September/October 1972, and the Chinese president told our prime minister in August of this year that Jamaica dug the well for the Americas, that is, we were the second ones to recognize China, China has discovered water in the well and China wants to share the water now with Jamaica. So it’s a very, very close relationship between China and Jamaica right now. China is investing quite a lot of money in Jamaica right now. BV: It sounds like the decision to acknowledge mainland China 40 years ago may be on the verge of paying off in a very big way. KENNEDY: It is. They are investing quite a lot of money in Jamaica – both concessionary loan financing and even grant funding. BV: Are there other countries that would be non- traditional that you’re trying to establish relationships with? KENNEDY: Because of the logistics hub, we need to open up trade relations and trade agreements with the countries of South America. We have with Columbia and Venezuela right now only, and in Central America we have with Panama and Costa Rica, but not the rest of Central America. So both the government and the private sector are now opening up negotiations to deal with that.